"Writing is at the mercy of the largest number of amateurs—almost the entire population."— Jacques Barzun

"When a writer thinks of his readers, common sense will tell him that a few of them will certainly not be his intellectual equals, but that the majority will be so, and that there will be some who are greatly his superiors; he should comport himself as a gentleman toward all of them."

— Robertson Davies

"Nearly every fiction writer in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith, hope, and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom."— Roald Dahl

“I’m afraid that surprise, shock, and regret is the fate of authors when they finally see themselves on the page. . . . Seeing one’s inadequate English frozen into type is a humiliating experience.” — Julia Child, My Life in France

“I think of it as it could have been, with its prolixities docked, its dullnesses enlivened, its fads eliminated, its truths multiplied.” — From the dedication page ofH. W. Fowler's Modern English Usage (1926)

One Writer's Ravings:
A Logophile's Blog
for Language Lovers

One of my high school teachers once said, “When you’re all grown up, you’re going to remember only ten minutes of what you learned in high school.”

I think that assertion holds true for most of us. You may remember quite well the tribulations of your life in high school—your extracurricular triumphs and failures, your angst-ridden struggle to establish an authentic self—but how much of what you were supposed to learn from your classes and textbooks and assignments do you recall? I can’t remember a single thing I wrote in my term paper on E. M. Forster’s novel A Passage to India, but to this day I carry with me a few precious words of advice from my English teacher that junior year. Read More